I have been excited about this news for weeks! I am sure that if you like reading my blog, there is a good chance that you like clipart as much as me!Some of my clipart has been chosen to be included in an awesome educents bundle!

My Christmas Stick Kids are new to my clipart collection and are seriously one of my favourites!

There are 35 other products in our bundle to get your teaching resources and documents looking adorable! 35 sets! Imagine the fun you will have with those!

Hop along our blog hop to see all the goodies you will get!

From here, you can hop to my friend Randi's blog - Teaches Third In Georgia!

But before you hop over to Randi, take a moment to 'pin' an image from my blog if you like. If you do, you can enter the rafflecopter below to win a $25 TpT gift voucher! That means you can spend $25 in my store, or any other store on the entire TpT website!

I have wanted to make this set for a long time, but it kept getting pushed down my to-do list. Koalas are my favourite animal. Not only are they so darn cute, but I can relate to their behaviour - they are often slow, sleepy and when you watch them, they seem to not care one little bit about much at all - except eating and snoozing - oh the life! They are happy to just chill in the corner branch of a tall Eucalypt (gum) tree.

For the last week or so, my home state of New South Wales has been battling horrendous bushfires. Our 'woods' or 'forest' here in Australia is called 'The Bush'.

My city of Lake Macquarie has not been sparred - we have had fires to our North, West and South. Thankfully my little suburb has so far been relatively protected, but the fire season is not over yet - we are only in the middle of Spring here and we have a long hot summer ahead.

Perhaps the worst of the fires near me, were those to the north, in the Port Stephens and Heatherbrae areas - around a 40 minutes drive from me. I spent many vacations in the Port Stephens area as a child, and just visited again in early October for a few days.

The Port Stephens area has been identified as one of the richest koala sites in my state, and contains prime habitat which supports one of our last viable koala populations (koala's are currently classified as a vulnerable and rare species - this in itself is a huge concern).

Of the many eucalypt trees that grow in Australia, only a few will be suitable for koalas - you can imagine what that means when we have these horrendous bushfires. If the koalas happen to survive, they are often left struggling to find their favourite trees and leaves. While most Australian wildlife will run when they smell bushfire smoke, the slow moving koala will just move higher into the canopy of their tree.

I am going to send 100% of the profits from the sale of this set to a non-profit organisation "Wildlife In Need of Care" that cares for injured Australian Wildlife in the Ports Stephens area - not just the koala.

They care for injured wildlife and nurse them back to health. When it's not bushfire season, they are helping animals that have been injured by speeding cars and domestic pets. I heard volunteers from this organization on the radio through the week, and I knew I wanted to help somehow. I am house-bound temporarily, after having some minor surgery myself, so I got busy creating these koalas today.

Included in this clipart set is a special badge that you can put on your blog IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO to show that you have supported the koalas. Please link back to this post if you can, so we can spread the news.

If you would like your students to learn more about Koalas, there is some excellent information on this site HERE

Please visit my TpT clipart store and consider purchasing this set to help me help our wildlife!

I love fixing things up and making them better, I always have - I blame my dad for that! I just updated a few items in my store. First one is my popular FREE game - Santa's Sleigh Drop. It has been downloaded close to 20, 000 times but a super sleuth popped in to tell me she preferred her math sentences with full stops (periods). Well, what better motivation for me than to overhaul the whole thing!

So I added a few additional pages and refreshed the formatting. You can find it HERE if you would like the updated copy.

The game includes ten AND twenty frames and will help your little learners with early subtraction.

It is best to teach early subtraction with words, not symbols. The difficulty lies in the fact that most little kinder students do not read many words. So I have deliberately kept the language and grammar SIMPLE so that they do not get overwhelmed with too many words! Effective kindergarten teaching is about starting with the most simple language patterns possible, and building up.

You may need to do some prior teaching before you play this game, and introduce the sentences that feature on each card. The first number is in green and the second in red. Teach your students to GO with green and STOP with red! This will scaffold them towards looking just at the numbers, and ignoring the words... which is where you want this to lead.

Use any classroom equipment as 'gifts' on the sleigh game boards.

My Gingerbread People got a little makeover too. I also added some plain gingerbread people that would be perfect for activities and centres (you can add content to their tummy!).

The next review was LONG overdue! Here is the thumbnail (don't laugh) of one of my first eBay products in 2005 - Write'n'Wipe boards for numeral writing review. Featuring some of my very early clipart (yes cupcakes were a theme for me even back then!)

Now they are looking a little different, but still perfect for K-2 learners!

It also motivated me to get them listed on TpT! The website is next, and yes I will do them in Aussie fonts!

Because I love giving gifts away just as much as Santa, please feel free to enter the rafflecopter below to win a $50 TpT gift voucher. I truly appreciate my kind supporters, and love to give back to you! I may not always get to answer each and every blog comment and feedback comment that you make, but I do read them all. This is my way of saying thanks!

I wish I could send you all one, imagine the fun spending that voucher!

The term 'Word Families' really means any set of words that carry a similarity. When I think of word families however, I mainly think of the vowel-consonant combinations that come in cvc words, for example.

After my kindies have learnt a good chunk of their single sounds and short vowel sounds, I am on to these! Get them blending! I got more confident with this after using the Jolly Phonics program. It suggests teaching students to blend cvc words after learning the first 6 sounds.. why not!?

Looking at cvc (and some ccvc and cvcc) words within a framework of 'word families' is a good way of introducing a spelling program of sorts in the kindergarten program. I like to focus on a different short vowel for every 2 week period.

This new set of worksheets in my TpT store will help you to work with short vowels, word families and cvc words (a few ccvc are included also). You can use them as individual worksheet, or group them together to make a student workbook.

Each page has a different word family house. Students use the pictures to help them write word-window flaps.

Students love to lift flaps to see what is underneath, and this book will become a favourite way for them to remember their learning of word families!

You can find it HERE in my TpT store, and I will have it listed at 50% off for the first 24 hours!

And speaking of houses - here is a very cute haunted one - to remind you that there is a super fun blog hop on its way! Stay tuned - you will not want to miss it!

The original just got even better! I made our write and wipe cards for cvc words quite a few years ago and I have wanted to update them for a while now. I am happy to say that job has now been crossed off my to-do list!

This resources has gone from 20 pages to a whopping 103 fun-packed pages!

If you have already purchased this file, just grab the new updates from your 'My Purchases' tab at TpT!

It's Friday again! I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to tell you 5 random happening from my week!

1. Blog Artwork

I have been helping my sister out by doing some artwork for her blog. She is crazy about Project Life, and I am in awe of the beautiful way she records her family life. Project Life is a lot like scrapbooking but a WHOLE lot more fun and seemingly more organised, with easy slide-in pre-cut pictures and journalling cards. I am very tempted to give it a whirl... I just need an extra day in my week!

2. Holidays!

It is still 'school holidays' here in Australia (term break) and with a very sick 18 months old (chest and ear infections) , we have spent lots of time at home. I have been doing lots of craft and drawing with my daughter, as well as playing outside in our backyard. Here is one of her cute little drawings.

3. Love Pretty Paper!

My sweet mum knows me too well, and gave me a kikki k gift voucher for my birthday. I finally got to go and select a few lovely items. Of course one of them is actually for children - but I have always had more fun looking in the kids section of most shops! Maybe one day I will become a grown-up and spend my birthday money on shoes!

4. Must Finish Jobs

My 2 years maternity leave is coming to an end shortly and I just had to apply for my part-time days for 2014. I have been working as a substitute this year. I cannot believe how fast 2 years has gone. My goal was to have a GREAT big bundle of resources printed, cut and laminated during my mat leave. Well, I am almost there. I have got this last bunch to go, and got motivated to at least sort them into 'bits' (as in, I am not sure where they go), stuff to laminate, resources to file, and a 'checking' pile, cause I have started and stopped so many times I forget if they are complete packets or partially completed. I daydream about having a whole day just to kick this job over.

5. New Stuff!

I have listed a few new items this week - one of them is a set of doodle borders that I drew when I was on my little vacation last week. I have listed them in my TpT store, and they will be 50% off for the first 48 hours!

Thanks so much for stopping by, I hope your week has been wonderful too!

My daughter and I love looking at the artworks on Kathy Barbro's website. We were both inspired by this one today and did a painting to feature those cute little birds! We also loved finding out how a sprinkling of salt can change how the paint dries.

I made these cute little bird counting cards after our art-making. There is a bird for each number 1-10. We did lots of activities with them that you could also use in the classroom. Here are a few ideas on how to differentiate and cater for all your levels of children in number.

1. Numeral Identification - use the cards for a quick number recognition activity - spread them out face up, call a number and get your students to 'catch the bird' with that numeral on it.

2. Counting - get your students to put the cards in number order and count them. Count forwards and backwards.

3. Matching Quantities - ask your students to pin the same number of clothespins/pegs onto each bird to become their tail feathers!

4. Counting-on - Ask your students to peg on the number of feathers to make a total of ten. In this example, my daughter pegged 6 more to make a total of ten on the 4 bird.

5. Addition - peg two birds together with the same number of pegs as the combined total of teh two numerals. So if the 2 and 3 birds were put together, students join them with 5 pegs.

I just got home after a little 3 day break in a precious piece of the world - Shoal Bay. I have not been away on a 'vacation' in so long its embarrassing to tell, but this will recharge my batteries for the next few years I hope. I am one of those people that prefers to live through the week at home with little touches of luxury, rather than saving for a week or two of vacation-luxury. I am a true homebody. I am also truly blessed to be so happy in my everyday life that I don't need to 'escape' it too often. My children adored their time away, with sun-shiny days, pure almost-white sand and crystal clear blue water! It was precious to see them explore the world beyond our normal routine.

No sooner did we get home, than it started 'what can I do now mum'?!

I asked Miss 6 to try one of the worksheets from my new resource. I wanted to provide her with a fun way of completing valuable handwriting and letter formation practice.

Each worksheet sees your student help to 'race' the letters to see which is completed first.

An easy spinner is provided on the worksheet - just use a paper clip and pencil.

As they spin a letter, they trace it! The first shape to have all letters traced is the winner.

Your students can add up how many letters of each they traced. This activity can be easily adapted to make it a partner activity, with two students working on the same worksheet - just ask students to use a different colour.

They got the tick of approval when my Little Miss 6 said to me "Mum, these are the best worksheets EVER'!

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